UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — The latest episode of the Growing Impact podcast features Peter Stempel, an associate professor of landscape architecture. His seed-grant project aims to provide information to decision makers who oversee historic landmarks and sites where sea-level rise is likely to occur. Specifically, the project is focused on monuments and landscapes that are significant to African American, Indigenous and other minority communities.
Stempel is an expert in realistic visualizations, which are computer-generated representations that precisely depict a landscape’s details as well as the scientific data. By using data from sea-level rise models and other sources, his project will provide visualizations to partners such as the National Park Service to inform their decisions and engage the public.
“Sea-level rise has gone from a someday thing to a now thing,” Stempel said. “In terms of the National Park Service — one of the partners I'm working with — they're faced with imminent choices about countless sites being harmed.”
Sea-level rise causes flooding; it also causes the water table to rise, which causes archaeological materials to decay and ecological sites to change. According to Stempel, the Park Service has adopted new frameworks for assessing what to protect and what to let go, as well as what to transform.
Stempel is working with the Park Service at Fort Monroe in Virginia, where the Algernourne Oak is located.
“It’s this tree that stood since the 16th century at Fort Monroe, and that's right near the place where the first Africans arrived in North America. It's called a witness tree,” Stempel said. “There are lots of resources like that deserve our attention and have a relationship to people beyond the local areas in which they exist. I want to make sure that the [visualization] tools we have to talk about these things are really up to the task.”
Growing Impact is a podcast by the Institutes of Energy and the Environment (IEE). It features Penn State researchers who have been awarded IEE seed grants and discusses their foundational work as they further their projects. The podcast is available on multiple platforms, including Apple, Google, Amazon and Spotify.